New York Trademark Attorney Blog
The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (the “Board or the “TTAB”) issued this precedential decision at the end of March 2018, and it was a partial win for the Applicant. The Applicant, Serial Podcast LLC, filed three applications at the United States Patent & Trademark Office {“USPTO”), one word mark (standard characters) for SERIAL, and two similar special format marks containing the word “SERIAL” with each letter being placed in a black rectangle with rounded corners. The design marks were identical except one did not claim color as a feature of the mark, while the other featured yellow letters outlined in red. The services were identified as “entertainment in the nature of an ongoing audio program featuring investigative reporting, interviews, and documentary storytelling”, in all three applications. The Examining Attorney refused all three marks on the grounds that each mark is generic for the services identified, and if not generic, then merely descriptive and that applicant’s acquired distinctiveness claim was insufficient to overcome the refusal. See In re Serial Podcast, LLC, Serial Nos. 86454420, 86454424, 86464485 (March 26, 2018) [precedential].
To support the generic refusal the Examining Attorney submitted definitions for the term SERIAL. The meanings for the term SERIAL can be summarized as a story or other subject matter that is published or broadcasted in a series in separate parts. Applicant’s services include producing an ongoing audio program (a podcast) appearing in regular weekly installments. The first season of the podcast included 12 episodes, and ran for approximately two months. Examples of use of the term SERIAL were submitted into the record.
Applicant argued that there were numerous examples where SERIAL is used as an adjective, and therefore the use cannot be generic. However, the Board found this argument not to be persuasive. The Board held that use of a mark as an adjective can be generic as well. See Sheetz of Delaware, Inc. v. Doctor’s Associates Inc., 108 USPQ2d 1341 (TTAB 2013) [precedential]. In fact, the TMEP specifically states: “The expression ‘generic name for the goods or services’ is not limited to noun forms but also includes ‘generic adjectives,’ that is, adjectives that refer to a genus, species, category, or class of goods or services.”